This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention recited in the claims. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Many retail stores sell fabric or other soft goods (e.g., lace, foam, canvas, felt, etc.) which are typically merchandised in large quantities. For example, soft goods may be maintained by the retail stores in the form of a bolt, roll, spool, or other configuration for efficiently storing and displaying many different soft goods in a limited retail space. Conventional systems for dispensing soft goods typically require a customer (e.g., at a retail store or other similar outlet) to bring the bolt or reel of the soft good to a service counter where store personnel assist the customer. The store personnel typically measure-out the customer's desired quantity of the soft good and then manually cut the desired quantity from the bolt or roll using scissors or other cutting instruments.
Conventional systems for dispensing soft goods suffer from several disadvantages. Customers are often forced to wait in a line or other queuing system (e.g., “take-a-number,” etc.) until store personnel are available to assist the customer in manually measuring and cutting the soft good from the bolt or roll. Store personnel generally provide customers with more than the requested amount of material due to inaccuracies in the manual cutting process. Additionally, conventional systems for dispensing soft goods typically require large, space-consuming measuring tables that occupy a significant portion of the retail space. It would be desirable to provide an improved system and method for dispensing soft goods that overcomes the disadvantages of conventional systems.